The Family Plot

 

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About the Author

Copyright Page

 

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This one is for everybody who's ever loved an old house.

 

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

In addition to the usual suspects (spouse, agent, editor, etc.) who have seen their names in these paragraphs a dozen or more times … I want to thank the folks from Black Dog Salvage in Roanoke, Virginia. I was sitting around with a glass of wine one night, watching a rerun of
Salvage Dawgs
all alone while my husband was out of town, and I happened to catch the “Check out our website/Drop us a line” note at the end of the episode.

I'd had just enough to drink to take them up on it.

So here's to
Salvage Dawgs,
a show that taught me just enough about the business to be dangerous; and in particular, here's to general manager Grant Holmes—who was kind enough to let me talk his ear off on the phone one fine day.

I know I didn't get all my facts perfectly correct, but in my defense (1) Most of what I know about old houses comes from the restoration angle, and (2) Grant really did do his best to straighten me out, I promise, but sometimes the narrative convenience of monsters had to prevail. So again, my thanks for all the help, and my apologies for all the things I screwed up. One of these days, I'll make it out to Roanoke with a U-Haul and shop my face off, I promise.

 

She buried them under the marble stone,

Then she turned and went on home.

—From the ballad “The Cruel Mother”

(one of many variants)

 

1

“Y
EAH, SEND HER
on back. She has an appointment.”

Chuck Dutton set aside the walkie-talkie and made a token effort to tidy his desk, in case Augusta Evelyn Sophia Withrow expected to speak with a goddamn professional. The owner and manager of Music City Salvage was every inch a goddamn professional, but he couldn't prove it by his office, which was littered with rusting light fixtures, crumbling bricks and broken statuary, old books covered in mildew, stray tools that should've been packed away, and a thousand assorted items that he was absolutely going to restore to life or toss one of these days when he got the time. His office was the company lint trap, and it was no one's fault but his own.

He successfully rearranged a stack of old license plates and stuffed all his pens into an
I LOVE MY MASTIFF
mug, just in time for his visitor to appear. She arrived in a faint cloud of expensive perfume: a tall, thin lady of a certain age and a certain pedigree. Her hair was silver and her dress was blue linen, something with a fancy label at the neck, unless Chuck missed his guess. Her handbag was large, square, and black—more of an attach
é
case than a purse.

She stood in the doorway, assessing the mess; then she bobbed her head, shrugged, and stepped over a nested stack of vintage oil cans that Chuck kept meaning to relocate.

Chuck darted out from behind his desk, hand extended for a greeting shake. “Kindly ignore the clutter, ma'am—like myself, this office is a work in progress. I'm Charles Dutton. We spoke on the phone, before you met with James.”

“Yes, of course. It's a pleasure.” She accepted his handshake, and, without giving him a chance to offer her a seat, she drew up the nearest chair—a Naugahyde number that had once sat in a mid-century dentist's lobby. “Thank you for seeing me. I'm sure you're very busy.”

Chuck retreated to his original position, sat down, and leaned forward on his elbows. “Anytime, anytime,” he said cheerily. “Projects like yours are what
keep
us busy.”

“Good. Because one way or another, that old house is coming down. It can't be saved, or at least, I don't plan to save it. But there's plenty on the property worth keeping—as James saw firsthand last week.”

“Yeah, he couldn't shut up about it. But this was your family home, wasn't it?” He already knew the answer. He'd looked it up online.

“That's correct. My great-grandfather built the main house in 1882. He gave it to my grandparents as a wedding present.”

“And none of the other Withrows are interested in preserving it?”

“There
are
no other Withrows,” she informed him. “I'm the last of them, and I don't want it. On the fifteenth of this month, the house will be demolished. By the first of November, all other remaining structures will be razed, and the property will be donated to the battlefield park. The paperwork is already filed.”

“Still, it seems like a shame.”

“Spoken like a man who never lived there,” Ms. Withrow said, not quite under her breath. Then, more directly, “You mustn't cry for the Withrow house, Mr. Dutton. It's a miserable, drafty, oppressive old place with nothing but architectural details to recommend it. James made notes and took photos, but I have a few more, left over from the assessment when I inherited it last spring. If you'd care to take a look at them.”

“I'd love to. He said you two talked numbers. I trust his judgment, but my finance guy balked when he heard forty grand, so I'm happy to see more of the details. I hear you've got imported marble fireplace inlays, stained glass, wainscoting…”

In fact, Barry the Finance Guy had not balked; he'd put his foot down with a hard-ass
no
. The company was owed a small fortune in outstanding invoices, as least two of which were headed for court. Music City Salvage barely had enough cash on hand to keep the lights running and cover payroll—and if a windfall didn't come along soon, they'd have to pick between the two of them. There was absolutely no stray money for sweetheart deals on old estates.

Period. End of story.

Still, when Augusta Withrow unfastened her bag to withdraw a large folder, Chuck eagerly accepted it. She said, “As for the fireplaces, only two have Carrera inlays. The other five surrounds are tile, but all seven mantels are rosewood, and, as you can see, the grand staircase is chestnut.”

“Mm …
chestnut
…” He opened the folder and ran his finger over the top photo. It showed a staircase that was very grand indeed, with a ninety-degree bend and a platform, plus sweeping rails that terminated in graceful coils. He positively leered. These pictures were a hell of a lot better than the ones James had snapped on his phone.

“I'm told that American chestnut is extinct now.”

“It's been that way since the thirties,” he agreed. “It's strong as oak at half the weight, and pretty as can be. Woodworkers love that stuff. It's worth … well. It's very desirable, to the right kind of craftsman. I don't often see it in stairs, but I'll take it wherever I can get it.”

“Then I should mention the barn, too. It's falling down, but I'm fairly certain it's made from the same wood.”

“Mm.”
Chuck's eyes were full of rust lust and dollar signs. He kept them fixed upon the photos so Ms. Withrow couldn't see the greed and raise her asking price even further out of reach.

After the staircase, he found a shot of a large fireplace. It had a double-wide front, with a pair of ladies on either side—their poses mirroring one another in white and gray marble. He spied a few thin cracks, but nothing unexpected. All in all, the condition was better than good. He looked up. “James said something about a carriage house. Is that chestnut, too?”

“Only stone, I'm afraid. It has the original copper roof, but it's all gone green now. You know how it is—the weather gets to everything, eventually.”

He glanced up in surprise. “No one's stripped it? No one sold it for scrap?”

“I don't know what kind of neighborhood you think we're talking about, Mr. Dutton, but…”

“No, no. I didn't mean it like that.” He shook his head and returned his attention to the folder. “I've been to Lookout Mountain before. I know it's a nice place. I wasn't trying to imply it was all et-up with meth heads, or anything like that. It's just something that happens. Over the years the metal goes manky, so people swap it out for cedar or asphalt shingles.”

She didn't reply for long enough that he wondered what her silence meant.

Finally, she said, “You won't find any
meth heads,
no. But the house is just barely on the mountain proper. It's down toward the base, and some of the nearby neighborhoods are not as savory today as they were a hundred years ago.”

“At the foot … you mean down by the Incline station?”

“At the edge of Saint Elmo—that's right.”

Chuck frowned. “I know that place; it's a historic district. Do you have the city's permission to bulldoze the property?”

“It's
near
Saint Elmo, not
in
it. I don't need the historic office's permission, and I assure you, all the appropriate legal steps have been taken. Now, did I mention that the floors are heart of pine, over an inch thick? Except in the kitchen, where they were replaced back in the sixties. My uncle was a very
thorough
man, with an unfortunate fondness for linoleum.”

“A full inch of pine? Lady, you're speaking my language,” he said, and immediately felt silly for it.

She grinned, unperturbed by his informality, and pleased to have redirected his attention. “Then you'll love this part, too: No one's been inside the barn or carriage house since before I was born. My grandfather boarded both of them up, and declared them off-limits. God only knows what you'll find once you get the doors open.”

Chuck didn't dare speculate about her age—not out loud—so he asked questions instead. “Not even a groundskeeper's been inside? No maintenance people? Burglars?”

“I won't vouch for the delinquent youths of outer Chattanooga, but barring some unknown vandalism … no. The house is isolated, and the property can be tricky to reach. You might need to throw down a gravel drive for heavy equipment or trailers. I assume you'll want to take the colonnades? The portico?”